There has been little of interest to report in the last few weeks. We are back to that time when vegetables dominate all the daylight hours.
Yesterday, a cool and cloudy day in the 60s, we had the annual pickernick. I cannot remember another July 4th weekend in my lifetime that was so blissfully cool. We chose July 3 as the date for the picnic because both Alissa and Rebecca could be here and there were a number of people who were more available on that day. It turned out to be a delicious evening. And the blueberries were in excellent condition -- no bugs, great flavor, plentiful. Everyone had such a nice time picking berries and sitting around eating and talking. It was easy to forget about the next day's work.
I was no help at all getting ready for the party but I knew that the girls would be more useful than I am anyway. Alissa baked gorgeous pies, they made muffins (I wasn't here so I can't give credit to the correct daughter here), Becca helped Jon set up the venue. Jon made mountains of barbecued chicken, standing over the grill but not sweating through his shirt this time.
The farm season is careening along. I say careening because I feel like we are in a vehicle which is only barely under control, relying on good will and good fortune to keep us on track. Carrie is out of town on vacation and most of the crew is made up of new workers, which means that I am doing a lot of early morning picking to make sure everything is done on time. So far so good. My mother and Michael Lipsky provide excellent ballast, keeping us from flying off the road (Michael and I picked all the vegetables for the CSA on Saturday morning -- that is a first for the two of us). Alissa came down to the stand to help bunch flowers and offered some necessary guidance to the stand workers -- I haven't been able to pay attention to all the details, and she very correctly pointed out that some of my instructions were misinterpreted (displays were very meager). All we really did to get ready to open the stand was a lot of sweeping. I am always amazed that customers come on the first day, since the day before the place looks like an abandoned shed, full of egg cartons and plastic bags that get dropped off all winter long. They know us by now.
The tomatoes are not ripe yet, even though they were planted earlier than usual. That long cool, wet spell in May slowed everything down. But I don't remember when the fields have looked so consistently healthy and beautiful, so that long, cool wet spell in May had some excellent side benefits, I think.
Mostly all I do is get ready for the next day. This involves a chaos of lists and charts and counting, and a whole lot of picking. Today I picked lettuce, chard, beets, fennel, dandelion greens, onions, leeks, endive, basil. I load up ten empty crates and head out to shop. Fill up my crates, roll back to the stand. Ten more crates on the golf cart, back out to a different field. Fill them up, come back in to see how things are going. The two other people picked all the squash and washed the vegetables that I hauled in. Washing takes much more time than picking so it is easy to stay ahead of them.
Sarita is here, totally self-sufficient. She gets herself to the rec center, she makes her own food, she mixes in with the crowd. We forgot to warn her about the pickernick but of course she was ready to jump in the car and go.
And now I have to go down and help close up the stand. It's the Fourth of July and a rainy afternoon, I doubt anyone has stopped to buy a vegetable in the last few hours. I will try to think of something more interesting to talk about for the next postcard...
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